1 December 2012–27 January 2013Anja Kirschner and David Panos Ultimate Substance

Neuer Berliner Kunstverein shows new work by Anja Kirschner (b. 1977 in Munich) and David Panos (b. 1971 in Athens). In recent years, Kirschner and Panos have established themselves internationally, taking a significant position in artist video and were awarded the 2011 Jarman Award. Most recently their work has been exhibited in locations including: Artist Space, New York (2012), Liverpool Biennial (2012), Staatsgalerie Stuttgart (2011), and Kunsthall Oslo (2011).

Their video Ultimate Substance (2012, 34 min), presented for the first time in Germany, will be staged in a setting of sculptural elements. The film departs from the hypothesis that the advent of coinage, which first emerged in ancient Greece, led to the fundamental division between sensual and abstract forms of experience. The metaphysical outlook of Greek philosophy and mathematics can be seen as corresponding to the abstract experience of monetary exchange.

Ultimate Substance was filmed in and around the Numismatic Museum of Athens and in Lavreotiki, a nearby mining district, where industrial scale extraction provided the silver on which the classical Athenian city-state was founded. Abandoned in Roman times, the mines were re-discovered in the 19th century making Lavrio the first factory town of the modern Greek state. In the 1970s the local mining industry was again dismantled. Today the factory ruins house an educational museum on mining history.

The artists collide choreographed movements of labour, geometric proofs, and archaeological and contemporary everyday objects, contrasted and assembled into a reflection on economy and the prehistory of industrial labour. Kirschner and Panos propose the introduction of coinage as crucial to the rise and development of the Western philosophical tradition and science, which even today dominates the way in which we comprehend the world.

Curated by Sophie Goltz and Kerstin Stakemeier.

PublicationThe exhibition is accompanied by an artists’ book with an essay by Richard Seaford, a text collage by Anja Kirschner and a foreword by András Pálffy; published by Revolver Publishing, Berlin.

Saturday, 26 January, 6pmArt as a Form of Crisis (Part 1): The Aesthetics of MoneyIntroduction by Stewart Martin (Senior Lecturer Modern European Philosophy, Aesthetics and Art Theory, Middlesex University London; Contributing Editor, Radical Philosophy, London), followed by an artist talk with Anja Kirschner and David Panos (artists, London / Athens), and Stewart Martin, moderated by Sophie Goltz (co-Curator, Ultimate Substance). In English.

Sunday, 27 January, 4pmArt as a Form of Crisis (Part 2): Money in the State of Crisis. The Example of GreeceDiscussion and workshop* with Michael Heinrich (mathematician and political scientist; Contributing Editor, Prokla. Zeitschrift für kritische Sozialwissenschaft, Berlin), Nikos Arvanitis (artist and musician, Athens) and with Freundinnen und Freunde der klassenlosen Gesellschaft (Berlin), moderated by Kerstin Stakemeier (co-Curator, Ultimate Substance). In German and English.

Jens Ziehe (b. 1966) has been working as a freelance photographer in Berlin since 1989. He has studied photography at the renowned Lette-Verein in Berlin from 1987 to 1989. In the early stages, Ziehe mostly worked for newspapers and magazines, and was particularly regarded as a photographer of the emerging arts scene in Berlin of the 1990s. He now works for museums, galleries, private collections, artist’s studios and other institutions. Out of his extensive oeuvre Ziehe presents artist’s portraits from more than 20 years, ranging between life- and magazine style, photojournalism and classic portraiture, including Franz Ackermann, Olafur Eliasson, Valérie Favre, Dan Graham, Mike Nelson and Thomas Scheibitz.

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